Aftermath
by rosehedwig243
Summary: Devastated and broken post-war, you leave for good. But a decade later, you return. You are: Luna. Put yourself in her shoes for a while.


Bodies huddle together. Some weep and find comfort in others. Some console the grieving. Some do both.

Others are laid out on stretchers. Like statues. Unmoving. Unmoving forever.

Others are in beds. Some of those are moaning in agony. Some slumbering. Some talking, albeit mostly intelligible sounds.

Some are tending to those in beds. They are pushing away their own grief and sorrow, for others. They must, otherwise the casualty rate would rise severely.

Then there's you.

You are huddled in a corner. You give off an emotionless state. Though inside, you are in overwhelming turmoil.

You no longer have any family. Your only relative, your adored father, is gone. Forever. He is one of the statues on a stretcher. Sleeping forever.

The only classmate that ever gave a damn about you appears beside you. Crouches down. Ask how you are.

You don't reply. To reply would be to break the self imposed silence you created once the battle was over. Once you realised you were an orphan. Alone. Forever.

You push Ginny away. You stand up. You walk the short distance to the doors of the Hall, and step through the entrance. You turn towards the Entrance Hall doors, and don't stop walking.

You're not coming back. Hogwarts holds too many memories. Sure, you have great memories of the seven years you spent learning and exploring magic in the castle.

But the memories of your fallen father and many fallen friends and classmates are too painful. The memories are stabbing your heart like a shard of glass that's impossible to remove.

You know that if you get away, the pain will numb. Not heal, numb. The pain and torment will never go away, only subside and fade away until they are faint and nearly forgotten.

It's a decade on from the battle, and you have finally returned to Hogwarts.

You found someone a few years ago. Someone who believes in Nargles and Crumple-Horned Snorkacks and every other creature that your classmates had scoffed at.

They have helped you heal. Helped you realise that to fully make peace with the pain that still resides in you heart and throbs every day, you needed to return to Hogwarts.

You resisted going. You could never find a time that felt right to go. And then out of the blue, you received an invitation to the 10th anniversary memorial celebration. Professor McGonagall must have found out somehow that you were around.

Rolf encouraged you to attend. He promises he will be fine at home with your ten month old twins, Lorcan and Lysander. If he really needed help, he said he would call on his parents for help.

So you go. Your face has changed much in the decade since you had last seen your friends, and not many recognized you til you introduce yourself as Luna Lovegood, the girl turned young woman who vanished 10 years before.

The person who is most glad to see you is Ginny. She was the last to see you. The last to see how much pain you were in. She told you that this whole time, she had been worried about you. You had told no one where you were going, and just walked out of Hogwarts the day after the battle, and had not been seen until you returned for the memorial.

You finally see the memorial cenotaph. It stands tall in the Entrance Hall, and looms high over everything. You turn away. Maybe you're not as ready to face the pain as you thought you were. But then Ginny slips her arm in yours, and leads your statue-like figure into the Great Hall for the ceremony.

Then something happens that you never expected to happen. Ever.

At the end, just before McGonagall finishes the ceremony with a closing speech, she invites you up on stage, and a man you do not recognize steps up onto the stage beside you. McGonagall invites the man to take over.

He talks about how you are an elusive person, after all you were unable to be found for a decade! His next sentiments surprise you. He says that you did Magical Britain a great honor by fighting in the Battle of Hogwarts, as you realise it is called.

The man pulls out a medal from his jacket's breast pocket and presents it to you. He says that you earned the Order of Merlin, First Class for your efforts that day, the 2nd of May 1998.

Without realising, as he had been speaking you bowed down, and you allowed him to place the medal around your neck. It feels heavy and surreal, you do not believe you have earned it.

You step down from the podium, still in shock. You sit back down in your seat next to Ginny, and your head falls into your hands. Your shoulders shudder with grief.

The emotions and memories are rising up again. As the ceremony finally ends, everyone gets up and files out, except for you, the trio, Ginny and McGonagall.

Everything fades out and blurs. All you can hear is the pounding of your heart, and all you can see is the image of your father as he lay on a stretcher, gone forever, in this very room, 10 years prior.

They gently lead you to a side room off the Great Hall, away from the crowds in the Entrance Hall where the press are all clambering and fighting to speak with you first, to get the exclusive first statement out of you, to discover where you have been and what you have been doing all these years away.

They bring you back to reality slowly. They know from before the war, that to trigger anything would be dangerous. You had a nervous breakdown in your fourth year, and no wonder; four years of exclusion and peer pressure, and then the Battle at the Department of Mysteries on top of that...

You worked so hard to build yourself up again after you broke down, and Ginny definitely knew that, as she was one of the main instigators of your recovery. She had helped you rebuild your confidence, personal image and self-esteem from the ground up, she knew that it had to be slow, or your world would come crashing down around your feet again.

As you slowly return to the present era, moment, day, you realise something. Everything feels peaceful.

Everything feels serene.

The pain is gone.

And life has taken its place.


End file.
